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There are many titles and versions of this fable and the author also is unknown. Inspired by the paradigms of Appreciative Inquiry, a research and a process facilitation method, let’s call this version as, ’Our Words Influence Our Worlds.’

Decades ago, an aged father used to let his ten year old son do some chores around their farm on weekends to keep him away from mischief, and hopefully impart some values into the boy. Much like Mr. Miyagi, the father would have the boy go draw water from the well all day long on one weekend. On another weekend, he would have him go paint the whole fence around the house. And, then there weekends where he would have the boy milk a dozen cows at dawn. The boy, as you may have guessed, needed to be kept busy to prevent him from his mischief and also the fact that he was quick to anger.

One such weekend, the father handed him a bag of nails and hammer and asked the boy to go and hammer all the nails into a large oak tree at the outskirts of their farm. The boy, though a little pesky, was quite obedient. A few hours later he rushes back to his father claiming the job was done. The father lets him dip into the cookie bar as a reward and allows him go play with his pals.

Come the following weekend, the little boy shows up again in front of the father asking for his assignment for this weekend. The father hands him the empty bag of nails and the same hammer from last week and has him go back to the oak tree and pull out all the nails he had hammered last week. The boy goes off, and in few hours rushes back with all the nails and hands them to his father. His father, this time, flips him a silver dollar as a reward and lets him go play with his pals again. Boy flies off to meet his pals, but halfway to them he stops, turns around to runs back to his father.

“I don’t get it, Father. Last week you had me hammer them’ nails in the tree and this week you had me pull them out. What’s the deal here?”

“Son, if you go back to the tree, you will notice that even though the nails are back in the bag and you have had your cookies and a dollar to boot, but the nail holes in that oak tree will be there forever,” replied the father gently and with love in his eyes. The son, though young, but quick of learning, stood there quietly basking in the warmth of his father’s gentle glance. “The same bunch of nails that can uselessly pierce holes into wood can also build a boat or a bridge. And, in exactly the same our words can draw blood or express kindness and build relationships and communities” added the father, lovingly.

Yes, just like nails, words can draw blood or bring together ideas such that new worlds get built. Words, once uttered out can never be drawn back just like a nails hammered in then pulled out will always leave marks. Many a times, mindlessly, we pour out words that cut holes into the hearts and spirits. And, there are times that we do such things on purpose.

Whether we do such things consciously or unconsciously the real issue is that the damage we do has a, long-term, systemic effect not just on individuals but on communities, countries and beyond.

What makes a word or a bunch of words put together draw blood or heal wounds? What makes a word or a bunch of words seal the deals to a bigger, brighter future?

There are certain words which are in essence toxic and harmful. No matter where and how you place them, these words are in bad taste and harmful. For example the word ‘hate’ instead of ‘love.’ For example the word ‘problem’ compared to the word ‘challenge.’ When we say ‘problem’ it then it requires digging down, holding back things and worry about resolving. Instead, when we use the word ‘challenge’ then it sounds like something that can be overcome and it has a tinge of possibility and potential built in into it. At the onset it may seem there is barely any difference but think of scores of other such words used in conversations and used in abundance too.

Next, we may use essentially positive words but if they are morphed together in such a way that they influence doubt or mislead people then, too, we are using words not build but to destroy our world. Words and ideas that deliberately employed at the wrong, time and place to distort context are equally harmful.

Then there are words and thoughts that are perfect but the hue and the tone that they are expressed in can give an evil twist to them and deliver disastrous results. Yes, the words ‘evil twist’ and ‘disastrous’ are words we should refrain from using as far as possible.

And, “Yes, you are right!” said with a sneer and curl of the mouth can still cut and draw blood like a rusted knife would. Even the ‘three little words’ expressed at the wrong time, in a wrong way and with a mean intention create more harm than good.

Think about this. Think about all the times we use all the kinds of word to write, speak or influence our worlds. Choose and study them the way a good mason picks, chooses his bricks and cements them on top of each other with alignment; with care and love. The more cautious and selective we are with every grain, every brick and every wall we build then the better and more beautiful our cathedrals will turn out to be. Our words will influence our worlds.

Thousands of executives across the world strive to get a large audience moving, talking, laughing and learning is like King Sisyphus wanting to roll up a rock onto a hill. It is hard, it is tough and like the proverbial rock, the audience can come tumbling down. Yet, there are many who appear to have been born with the abilities to rouse up audiences and work the room naturally. The truth be told no matter how skilled and natural certain speakers appear, they all drill themselves mad through scores of techniques and tricks to rack up engagement and learning transfer.

This is not to downplay authenticity of intentions, quality of content and meaningfulness of purpose in public speaking, but to highlight the fact that the best of intentions and purposes need to be packaged prettily and brandished with fun.

To back up an article, Large Crowd Energizing Techniques, that I wrote a few years ago, here are eleven more easy ideas we can use. Besides the science that is explained in the aforementioned article the simple reason behind energizing our audiences is that every speech, every presentation and every conversation is an exchange and play of energy. When the speaker steps up to the lectern all eyes are on her and, thus, so is all the energy upon her. Call it the burden of leadership at that moment. Now when a speaker begins to dialogue or engage with the audience the energy begins to churn constructively.

To unburden and then brace your-self to rock and roll, here are eleven ideas:

Ask a few positive closed questions with good chances of ‘yes’ as an answer. Keep these questions closed, short and simple. Like, “all feeling good?” “Looking forward to a fun day?” “Feel this quarter is going to be a better than the last one?” Manage to keep this activity less than 90 seconds.

Ask them to talk to the person next to them and share, for less than 60 seconds each, “how they started their day this morning?” While they are at it, take a sip of water, check your clicker and slides and manage to keep the whole thing less than three minutes.

Ask them simply to stand up, stretch and greet and welcome a few people they haven’t yet met. The hustle, the bustle and the smiles will unburden the energy off your shoulders and churn it around the room. Keep this activity also under three minutes for larger crowds and short keynotes, but allow five to seven minutes for smaller training sessions.

If you are conversant with mindfulness meditations then have them sit up, sit silent, close eyes, focus upon their in and out breathes while thinking about how they want their day to turn out. Give them a minute of silence. Have them open their eyes and share their thoughts with the person next to them. Keep the whole activity down to less than three minutes. It is called a ‘minute to arrive.’ A minute to let their awareness and focus blend in and settle into their bodies.

If there is paper and pencil available, have them caricature a self-image and add an event expectation. Something like, “today, Joseph the accountant, wants to learn how to authentically influence others.” This will generate laughter, relax and cue you into your topic of the day, ‘Authentic Leadership Influence’ or whatever. Manage to wrap this up, also, in less than five minutes.

Flash a sensational statistic, a report or a headline on the screens and pause for them to grapple with it for a ten to fifteen seconds. An example: An average person spends One Hundred and Twenty Minutes, or better still, Seven Thousand Breaths a Day, on social media. That is like taking a shower twenty times in a day! And, when the surprise and murmuring tones down you can plunge into your talk.

Flash a very rare and unique photograph that has some sort of relevancy to the audience or to the subject matter at hand. The picture can also be of incident that you will tell a story about during your presentation. Make sure the picture is not unpleasant, is easy to recognize and recall but carries meaning and purpose to the topic at hand. A good and a relevant picture works like a good prop. It takes the eyes away from you and directs them onto the picture. Thus, it moves the energy around.

Display a real prop, a model or a gadget. Years ago, a motivational speaker friend of mine, Harry Pound, used to carry an old-fashioned, hand-operated water pump in the back of his car. At every speaking opportunity he’d place it on stage and mime pumping it while explaining that water, results only flow when effort is consistently made. Effort and hard work in, results and water out. The physical activity takes away attention and helps you, the speaker, get over herself and become one with the audience and vice versa.

Employ gentle and benign humor. The powerful science behind humor is that the speaker has to herself the target of the joke. She has to belittle and humble herself, this deflates self-consciousness and endears the audience to the speaker. Refrain from trying complex humor. Keep it simple and light. Manage proper timing between setup and punch. Make an effort to relate it to the event. Years ago, I was to greet a guest speaker at the gates of a hotel and then escort him in and introduce him to the audience. Somehow I missed him at the gate and he was already on stage. At his introduction, I claimed that I was so dense that I’d never get a job in the immigration services. That earned me a lot of laughs because our guest was the then commissioner of immigration in the country.

Tell an analogical story that somehow relates to the subject at hand. A friend of mine tells a story about how tigers when cornered fight back ten times more ferociously than normal. He takes his time in describing the mindset and the fighting nuances of a tiger. He then goes on to add how his sales and marketing teams work with ferocity during bad times. Spend just a few minutes painting a word picture of a cornered tiger. During the rest of your talk, compare how cornered tiger-like traits are found in salespeople. Spend three to paint the word picture and throughout your speech make a call back to it, like “rise and roar like a tiger!” It acts like a non-tangible prop and keeps your audience hooked for good.

Tell a story which kind of spins off into a question. Years ago, I made up a fictional story of a farmer who digs for oil and fails several times and then eventually succeeds. At the near end of the story I ask the audience why he fails so many times, and where was the wealth during all those times. While they ponder upon possible answers, I deliver my message about discovering strengths and at the end of it give out the correct answer to the story. A roar goes through the audience because they then see the connection between the story and my presentation.

Understand this, the sight of any audience can give the heebie-jeebies to the best of us on stage. Lawrence Olivier, Meryl Streep and Amitabh Bachchan all claim rights to stage fright. Winston Churchill would claim to have bats in his belfry before any talk. To get nervous is normal. To be in awe of the energy pulsating from crowds is also normal. There are across the world scores of speakers who know how to motivate large groups by using the energy that emanates out of crowds.

Some methods work and some fail. There is no silver bullet solution to this malady and there is no such thing as the perfect and ultimate formula for success in delivering keynotes. The ones that you, sometimes, see and hear have been well planned, well-rehearsed and choreographed such that they appear as extremely natural. Only after a lot of practice will you become unconsciously competent with the sciences audience engagement and motivation. Even then you will always be striving for perfection but never reach it. Nobody has reached it. No, not even Socrates, Demosthenes, Twain, Churchill, Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mandela, Obama or Trump. They have just done well with what they had, and then created their own styles.

Study all the flavors, try the ones you like often and mix your very own cocktails. Just remember to be kind, courteous, compassionate and refrain from laughing at your own jokes.

MANY A TIMES in my workshops on public speaking, sales, negotiations and other soft skills, I have stressed the importance of acutely aligning our internal resources like our mood, our state of mind and most importantly our authentic agenda behind the conversation.

I have also stressed, referring to the 55+38+7 percentage rule of Dr. Albert Mehrebian which highlights the impact of body language, nonverbal behavior and words used in our conversations.. The 55+38+7 percentage rule on impact and effectiveness states that of a 100% impact upon our listeners, 7% comes from words, 35% from tonality and other nonverbal behavior and 55% from our bodily movements and total presence.

Now this is only partially understood by many and completely misinterpreted by many a trainer and coach of interpersonal communications. When Dr. Mehrebian, originally, conducted studies on communication patterns the results of the studies were widely circulated in the press, in abbreviated form, leading to blithe acceptance and generalization of his thesis.

Think, Edit, Speak!

Dr. Mehrabian’s research was to decipher the relative impact of facial expressions and spoken words. His subjects were asked to listen to a recording of a voice saying the single word “maybe” in three tonalities, to convey liking, disliking and neutrality. The subjects were then shown pictures of the faces conveying the same three emotions. Then subjects were asked to guess the emotions portrayed by the recorded voice, the pictures and both combined. The subjects’ assessment of the picture plus voice drew more accurate responses.

In another study, subjects listened to nine recorded words, three meant to convey liking (honey, dear and thanks), three to convey neutrality (maybe, really and oh) and three to convey disliking (don’t, brute and terrible). The words were spoken with varying tonalities and subjects were asked to guess the emotions behind the spoken words. The finding was that tone created more impact and meaning than words alone.

Thus the 55+38+7 rule was born and has been promoted around for years and decades across disciplines and other learning interaction. Years later, Dr. Mehrebian declared he never intended his results to be applied to everyday conversations and public speakers cannot just depend on 55+38% impact alone. The truth is that the spoken word has several intangible components and a flat out application or the assumption of this rule would be a fallacy. All interactions must equally depend on the three factors, i.e., body, nonverbal and the words. The percentages of each may resemble the rule for 100% impact but in reality will vary upon depending on the medium and the context.

What true and heavy impact will really depend upon is the clarity, the purpose and the authentic agenda of the speaker. Through the filters of the body, the tonality, the gestures, the micro-gestures and flowery language what are truly seen, heard and sensed well are the purpose and the agenda of the speaker. Getting an alignment and agreement between what we truly want, feel and need helps make the outward expression of it more viable, acceptable and impact heavy. Alignment of our internal resources: spiritual, emotional, intellectual and physical is guaranteed to create resonance and consensus easily.

In public speaking this is the heart of it. When any speaker or business leader manages to dive deep into her own self and surfaces with valuable insights and resources that will serve and please her audience then she just doesn’t communicate effectively but evokes great emotions and drives transformations. Back in the day, they used to say that when Socrates spoke people claimed “great speech, great speech!” and when Demosthenes spoke people used to get on their feet and claim “let’s march!”

In today’s milieu people experience anxiety, doubt and fear when it comes to facing large audience because we feel we will be judged and truly so. Yes, we will be judged by several pairs of eyes and ears. These eyes and ears and other senses will zero in and probe into what exactly you wish to achieve as speaker and a leader. If you wish to benefit and authentically serve your audiences then most all anxiety, doubt and fear will fizzle away because your heart and mind will move away from being self-focused and more into serving the gift of your knowledge and wisdom to others. The heart of public speaking, as a leader, may be yours but it beats because of your audiences and your world.

The other day at a business gathering someone asked me, “Raju, what, according to you, has changed in sales and selling over the decades?” Slightly offended by the inclusion of the word decades in the question I quickly brushed it aside by saying “nothing has changed” and moved on. Late at night, I lay wondering and thinking about my experiments and experiences in selling.

At my first honorary job with my father, which was to run errands and try selling for his small school-bag making business, I’d sell nothing at every interaction. I’d walk into his customer’s shops and stand against the wall; tongue-tied praying the shop-owner would leap out from behind his glass counter and beg me to send him school bags. That never happened. I sold zilch. Dad lost hair worrying about my future as a business person.

At my second job, after making it as an engineer, I was assigned to sales. Sales in the engineering company I worked for meant filling up a large wad of papers with numbers, descriptions and a covering letter called proposals. There were templates to follow, listed prices to tally up but there was barely any people to people interaction. The wheeling, dealing and the closing was done by those big-bellied guys called bosses.

At my third job selling futures in pork-bellies, orange juice, barley, copper and gold my then ‘balikbayan’ boss Ricky Ho saw me suffer at selling and called me aside and said, “Hey Raju, recognize this, people sell for two reasons: one to get rid of something and two to make a profit. What do you want to’ do?” I owned nothing and thus nothing had to be gotten rid of, so I supposed I’d had to make a profit. After that epiphanous moment I learned to sell. The need to survive taught me how to make cold calls, how to qualify, analyze, integrate, pitch, offer, present, solve, offset objections, sooth, meander, negotiate, upsell, cross-sell, resell, negotiate, close, re-open, serve with maximum subtlety and suaveness.

Thus, decades ago, uh-oh, there is that word decades again. Decades ago, or before the turn of the century, the “ABC” selling was, as Alec Baldwin screamed in the 1992 movie Glengarry Glen Ross, was to “Always Be Closing.” But as the previous century began to wind up entered the ‘internet of things,’ and Alibaba, and explosions of access to all avenues of humongous information. The days of just selling to get rid of something or make a profit out of something began to slowly and steadily began to be replaced by terms like relationship selling, consultative selling, solution selling, ethical sales, selling to serve, selling to solve, selling to not just create value but to co-create value. Sales and selling had merged into resolving needs and serving customer desires. No, it really had moved beyond finding solutions and serving needs. The seller and the buyer had to tear down walls of privacy and secrets between themselves. It wasn’t just one against another but both, together, towards a faster, better and a cheaper world.

Individuals and companies which did not adapt to this reset got covered in cobwebs and then in white sheets. Rest in peace names like Kodak, IBM, Mattel, Tower Records, Sears, etc.

Yet there was a certain element of truth to my response of “nothing” to the question, “Raju, what, according to you, has changed in sales and selling over the decades?”

Yes, the sales environment has changed. Yes, the rules of the game in the marketplace are different. Yes, the tools of the trade are niftier and swifter. Yes, even the attitude has taken a turn and is still transforming for the better. What hasn’t changed is that every transaction whether it is to get rid of something, to make profit out of something or to serve a need and find mutually beneficial solutions is that all of them require trust. Trust, raw and unadulterated trust.

The oldest profession in the world requires a certain element of trust. The used car salesman, no matter how sleazy, requires to become worthy of trust. Ricky Ho my former boss, needed to earn a lot of trust to sell bellies of pork upon which all his big time investors never laid eyes upon. The guy who sells Boeing airplanes to the airlines of all nations needs to acquire trust and so does every other sales and service professional that sits behind a monitor and hacks away at a keyboard to sell unseen products to unmet customers.

The why and the how of earning trust from one to another hasn’t changed and might never change till the end of time.

The prelude into earning trust is authenticity. Here, not just the salesperson but every person and every leader needs not just have an attitude but believe and act out of a hutzpah made out of originality, honesty, openness, courage and vulnerability. A person with that kind of a hutzpah stands out because he stands up and steps in the right direction consistently. He now becomes trustworthy. To earn trust he needs to blend consistency with competence and compassion for the customer, for the stake-holders. Overtime such a leader becomes a champion at earning trust.

The obvious postlude to trust is that your people, your followers, your partners, customers gently and surely move in the right directions that you and them take together. That is influence.

In the coming decades and eons all that we see and hear as innovation, may innovate further, but the backbone of all growth and positive change in sales or any service will always be authentic influence.

Talk about being authentic and, often you will hear this one: “We are in such a hurry to grow up, and then we long for our lost childhood. We make ourselves ill earning money, and then spend all our money on getting well again. We think so much about the future that we neglect the present, and thus experience neither the present nor the future. We live as if we were never going to die, and die as if we had never lived.” By Paulo Coelho

Most all our lives, we desperately struggle to find ourselves. We strive to live, and live out our lives exactly the way we want to but end up creating and living in contradictions. It is not that in the deepest of our hearts we do not know what we want. We do, but adapting and adjusting to a demanding world we let our true selves get corroded, get covered with gunk. Yet from deep within there is that being, that energy and that soul that yearns to fly, to go and grab a fistful of the sky and claim it as how own.

In the history of mankind there have been a few who have flown so high and so purely in the skies of their own choosing. And, there are almost all of us who for scores of times in our lives have dug a window through that corrosion and that gunk that surrounds and made our presence felt. We have, at times, lived out our dreams and desires loudly and boldly. The question that arises is how do increase the frequency of these liberating moments and sustain them so that at the end of our days we can feel that, hey, I am ready to die because I have lived a full, fruitful and an authentic life. Inspired by an interview, I conducted of Dr. Peter Senge a few years ago, it struck me living an authentic life at work and in society when we:

Step Up: In all circumstances, especially the most challenging ones our options eventually get boiled down to just two. Should we take the well-treaded and safe path or should we step up and take the road less travelled. The roads less travelled, or the right decisions that will make us stand apart and away from others are always packed with risk but the person who steps up to the calling of his inner voice, scales up the mountains of authenticity. Yes, it takes courage to be authentic. Yes, it takes gumption to stand up, speak up and move towards what your heart, mind and soul tell you are the right things to say and do.

Step In: Daniel Goleman in his book, Focus, talks about how a bunch of preachers-to-be on the road to take up tests in compassion and kindness totally ignore a homeless person on the street asking for help. In their case, it was probably about lack of awareness but often in life, we prefer to stay away from trouble that doesn’t belong to us. In a highly interconnected world most everything does, in a way, belong to us. The other day, someone sent me a video of some folks torching the tongue of street dog. The thought in my mind was why would someone take a video of that and not stop the carnage? Or, when we see others dumping toxic waste and plastic into our rivers why don’t we step in. Stepping in into murky situations, if our conscience calls for it, is the authentic thing to do.

Stand Tall: Dr. Peter Senge in that interview, available on you tube, claims that the eye cannot see the eye. We don’t ever know what the objective reality is because our perceptions, our lenses towards the world are tinted with our biases, our own agendas. Some of these, surely, are unconscious but a large number of those stains on our glasses are of our own making and the cleaner our windows are to the world the better we see it and the taller and prouder we can walk. Coming from clarity and approaching situations conscientiously will allow us to be ourselves, walk and stand tall in a volatile, uncertain, changing and an ambiguous world. Said once my favorite childhood author, George Bernard Shaw, “Best keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you see the world.”

Authenticity is not just honesty, it is not just being frank and outspoken but being authentic is being true to you inner calling moment after moment. It is about stepping up to challenges, stepping into situations where the right thing needs to be done and also keeping your values and your visions clean.

We live in a world that is constantly changing. We do not have to be the change because every breath we take, every though we think, every word we utter and every action that we take creates change. We do not need to apply force neither do we need to use undue power. We just live out our life with authenticity and gentle influence.

I masticated a bit over the title of this article but came to a conclusion that, that is what I mean and that is what I have to say. One of the cardinal rules to succeed in public speaking is to say what you mean, and mean what you say.

May years ago, when I wrote my first ever book on public speaking, the HeART of Public Speaking, I placed on the cover an expensively purchased picture of a man speaking from behind a lectern to a highly engaged, happily laughing audience. The beauty of the picture wasn’t just in the fact that the audience looked extremely engaged, it was in the boldness of the fact that the speaker’s rear silhouette was butt-naked. I had my artist drape a gentle, heart-shaped shawl around the speaker and then the cover went ahead and said exactly what I had laid out inside the book. I loved it and so do those who still own that edition.

To succeed, to shine and scintillate at public speaking, one must do exactly that – expose your true self and then wrap yourself and your presentation with love.

How, you ask?

Well, you might have heard the saying that people would rather be in the coffin than do a eulogy. People fear public speaking more than they fear death. What we really fear is being exposed to scores of eyes that may not just see into us but that they may also see us through our charades. Our true selves might sometimes be timid, pretentious or arrogant. Or, worse scenario, people fear speaking up in the presence of large audiences because our agendas are unethical, and we say what we do not mean and mean what we are not saying. With scores of eyes watching our every move, every micro-gesture, every bead of sweat we can be called out for what we really are and what our true intentions might be. That is the fear.

This, of course, may not be everyone’s reason but the question remains the same – how do we expose our own true selves and yet be covered by a protective heart? Here are certain tips that I have picked up from failing, sweating and dying then coming alive a thousand times when in front of a large group of people.

First, recognize and live out ‘common humanity’. Tell yourself that the people out there are people just like you. Some smart and some not so smart, just like yourself. Tell yourself that they, too, have doubts, fears, anxieties, challenges and aspirations in life just as you do. Tell yourself that they are here to hear you no matter how profound or ordinary your spiel for them may be.

Second, generate loving, agape, feeling towards them. Though love resides in the hearts the activation of the desire to offer kindness, compassion and love is a function of the prefrontal cortex. You consciously tell yourself to be kind and loving, then the forty odd million neurons residing in your heart go to work creating love for your audience. When that happens, you radiate kindness, and kindness begets kindness. Sure, there is a chance that there may be one or two thick-skinned, bitter lemon of a person in the room who will continue giving you the heebie-jeebies. Just go on without them, they will eventually turn into sweet lemonade.

Third, according to international speaker par excellence, Scott Friedman, be authentic. What does that mean? It means expose your true self. You don’t have to talk like your college professor or like Chris Rock. Just be yourself. Let your flaws, your stutters, your accent be seen, felt or heard. Let your heart lead you and speak from the heart. If there is something you don’t know or are not sure, say exactly that, “I don’t know that, and I am not sure about that.” That’s okay. You are neither Solomon nor Google.

Fourth, also according to Scott Friedman, be vulnerable. Yes, you do not wear a tight blue suit with a red cape. You were not born on planet Krypton. You can bleed, and you can hurt. Expose all those sides of you that can bleed and hurt. Most people in the audience will relate to you, offer compassion and a much kinder ear if you pretend not to be a flawless, man of steel. Should the thick-skinned, bitter lemon hurl a rotten egg at you, say “Ouch!” and then right away forgive her for she knows not what she does. She knows not that you are human too. Keep doing the right thing and keep creating value with your words.

Fifth, is to become good at being light and funny as a speaker. Laughter is the shortest distance between two hearts, and humor is the vehicle that will drive you there. Some people are naturally funny, and others can get there through practice at public speaking. ‘Neuro-plasticity’, you know! The more you do something, the more you become that – in this case, funny. Just make sure to make yourself the butt of all your jokes otherwise, the thick-skinned, bitter lemon will stare you down to your death. Or, better still take up lessons from‘the HeART of HUMOR.’

There!

Of course there is a lot more to public speaking. There is this fact that speaking in public is about, as I have already said, creating good value. It is about inspiring people, and about leading them to a new and a better place in their lives. You can do it. Yes, you can because the brilliance and wish to shine is in all of us. It is in all of us to help, love and cherish all those that surround us but, first, we need to have the gumption to expose ourselves, our true selves.

I never let many copies of my first book, first edition, circulate in the marketplace because I was afraid. I was afraid that the cover was too brash, and it would scare away the conservatives. The thing is even though I’d written all about being brave, about being kind, authentic and open; I wasn’t brave, I was still a newbie to expressing myself courageously. Yes!

To wrap up, let me caution you away from that saying where public speaking gurus will tell you that to overcome your fear, you should imagine all your audience butt-naked. That, to me, is utter nonsense. Baloney! It is bound to scare the bananas out of you and sink you into the ground. It is best to, not just imagine, but be in your spiritual birthday suit when speaking in public. It is best to expose yourself as you are, bare your soul and your audiences will lift you up into the heavens. Have fun!

It doesn’t matter whether I do basic presentation skills or advanced executive presence training, one question that constantly pops us is “How do I convert my being sensitive of others into confidence in self?”

My experience and beliefs tell me being highly sensitive of others’ presence, their thoughts, and their opinion isn’t a shortcoming but an advantage.

Think of this, that while conversing, when you mind and monitor what feelings run through their minds is inside information. It is unspoken feedback and you’ve gotten access to it. Isn’t that an advantage?

Decades ago, a stern face or a disengaged audience member would scare and disrupt my chain of thoughts. And, when I’d approach them later, I’d be able to assess that most often than not there were other things on their minds and not just my performance. Soon, I began to challenge my own assumptions about their state of mind. Very soon I began to convert my being disturbed and disrupted into a turnaround in the conversation by creatively engaging the person that scared me by a quick question or by pausing and smiling at them. It was, for me, putting the NLP principle of “the map is not the reality,” principle into practice.

My thoughts and actions gave me an inside view of their state and my state changed for the better. Not only did the technique change our state but also gave a power boost to whole performance with the larger audience in the loop. My being sensitive of others wasn’t and isn’t a disadvantage anymore but is an ace in my hand.

Being sensitive towards others isn’t a weakness.

To see, hear and feel acutely is the trademark of the alive and compassionate leader-speaker.

First memorize it like crazy, then forget it for a while. It will have found a hiding place for itself in your deeper brain.

Second make attempts to tell it from memory in your own words, like a casual chat. You will feel like and become OWNER of the new version.

Third, tell it from the perspective of one of the characters in the story. If there are no characters other than you then let any inanimate object, say a chair, from the story tell the story. It’ll help you enhance the drama when you really tell the story next time.

Four, have someone else tell you or read the original or your new script. You will discover new areas where impact and engagement can be increased.

Five, go all out when you tell it. Live your dream-delivery, model your storytelling hero. Enjoy. Unleash yourself unashamedly. Stories are meant to be told so they inspire and motivate others so why hold yourself back? Go! Fly! Shine!

https://i2.wp.com/www.mandhyan.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Humor-Launch-20062-e1473849318674.jpg?fit=1200%2C582&ssl=15821200Mandhyanhttps://www.mandhyan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/RM-Website-Logo-e1535351828953.pngMandhyan2016-09-14 18:07:402017-05-31 22:55:25Wanna' become a Good Storyteller?

More than a decade ago, I was invited to compére a dinner meeting for a lady presidential candidate in the Philippines. My job was to stay within the theme of the evening, introduce others and keep the transitions lively and contextual.

Days before the event, I gathered the material, read resumes and prepared my lines and timing. On the night before the event, I had everything down to a pat. That night in bed, the challenge of the next day, seemed bigger and scarier than usual.

I tossed and turned restlessly late into the night. Finally, when I did sleep, I had a nightmare. In the nightmare, I was up on the stage next to all the speakers and the lights were strong on my face. Awed by the crowd, I went into a state of shock. From nowhere the lady chief guest walked up to me, handed me the microphone and said, “Raju, it is your turn!”

My turn! I tried grappling with the pages in my hands which began to fly and circle around me in slow motion. The microphone turned into a cobra and stared me down. When I looked down at my finely dressed audience…they had changed. In their place were people of all kinds. I saw fishermen, street hawkers, and gaunt-faced ladies with cigarettes dangling from their lips. On the floor there were hundreds of crawling babies screaming at their mothers to stop smoking and pay attention to them. My wife was in the crowd begging everyone to calm down and please listen to me, the speaker!

The back of the hall had somehow transformed into a runaway, railway compartment with dozens of big, burly men playing basketball in it. Bigger, burlier men with beer mugs in their hands were watching the game and screaming and shouting while the train of my life was hurtling away to hell!

In the nightmare, through the chaos, somehow, I heard someone knock at the door of the railway compartment. Covered in cold sweat, holding back a scream in my throat, I jumped out of my bed to answer the door!

The knocking on my bedroom door was real, and when I opened it there stood my little 7-year-old daughter, crying for her mother. I picked her up and held her against my heart. With her against my chest, I recognized the absurdity of the whole situation. The demons of anxiety and fear had been playing games with my mind. I realized my fears were unfounded, my jitters unnecessary. Slowly but steadily confidence and an inner peace seeped into my whole being.

I went to sleep assured that tomorrow, I was going to perform for a crowd and not go to war with the world. My fears were gone and the material that I had been working upon became mine. The next day I dazzled the crowd and the lady presidential candidate.

Today, decades later, I have learned techniques that can help speakers like us quell our nerves on the night before and be our best on stage the next day.

Eat right. Eat light and soak up on liquids the day before and also sleep early and well. Nothing like a rested body to support the mind when it is anxious.

Master of Ceremonies!

Work away at the content, the script and your spiel a day or two before and then let it go. Let it go, as in, let it seep into your subconscious by not thinking too much about it. Letting the stress go, for a while, puts the task on the back burner and still stews them well.

Engage in light, happy and refreshing activities like swimming, badminton etc., to de-obsess your mind with details about tomorrow. Maybe, sketch out like an info-graphic or a mind-map key ideas and points you want to remember about your spiel tomorrow. This is to keep a frantic mind, an element of the pre-frontal cortex, at peace.

Remind yourself that your big, hairy goal is to serve, please, entertain, support and add value to the work-life of your audience. Yes, focus on this the most.

Lastly, trust in the fact that things do eventually come together well when our core intentions are good, ethical and selfless. It is then that we become mighty in our spirit and in our performances.

The reality today is very few people in the world want to see or hear the bold truth. In fact, the bolder and starker the truth gets, the lesser attention it receives. It can, more often than not, be despised such that people thwart and rebel against it. And yet, the same beautiful truth when wrapped in color, garnished with flowers, and accompanied by song can become a reigning reality. That is the power of Story. Stories are core Truths wrapped in roses, rainbows and rhythm. That is the story behind storytelling.

HISTORY OF STORIES

Eons ago, when man discovered fire, he also discovered the wonder of telling stories around that fire. After a hard day’s hunt, he would gather his tribe and begin to converse and tell great stories. He told stories about the source of life, about the sun, about the moon and the stars. He also told stories about the time and place where the sun was born and how the moon romanced it. He told stories about how the moon pursued the sun and died every month to be reborn to love the sun all over again. He told stories about how every individual had a star of his own up in the teal and midnight-blue skies.

Day after day, night upon night, from one season to another, man told stories –tales about love, courage, adventure, conquest, and wars. Around the fire, he told stories of ferocious Spartan warriors and heroes that battled one-eyed giants. He told stories about birds that could fly into the sun, burst into cinder, and then rise again from the ashes to fly right back into the sun.

Over the ages, stories of tradition, honor, and great courage ruled the air around the fires. There were stories told about great escapes, bold robberies, and giant shipwrecks. Discoveries were reported about new worlds, new wealth, and new people. Narrated with rhyme, repetition, and rhythm, all these stories were etched on the walls of the caves where our ancestors lived and into the hearts and minds of all mankind. Shadows and echoes from the flickering fires left unforgettable legends visualized and represented on the walls of our current homes. Today, many of these stories have become a large part of belief systems, of our culture and our tradition.